David Rothman's
TeleRead:The backwards West? One of the reasons why TeleRead favors national digital libraries, plural, is that different countries have different values. Certain Americans, for example, would consider many Moslem countries to be backwards and blame the religious environment for the poverty of the typical Arab.
But who says that the West is in all respects the paragon of intellectual freedom? ... A reverse brain drain is happening. Some Western scientists are coming to China for greater freedom within their niche. Bottom line? More economic power for China in the long run at the expense of the States--thanks to our backwards policies toward even therapeutic cloning. So much for the stereotypes. What's more, centuries ago, certain Moslem rulers were far more enlightened than Christian counterparts at the time, as shown by Islam's treatment of Jewish intellectuals and merchants in Spain...